Top 10 Best PDF APIs: PDF To Text, Webpage, PDF Generator, and Other APIs

Portable Document Format (usually abbreviated to PDF) is a ubiquitous file format that is popularly used to display electronic documents independent of the operating system, hardware, or software.

PDFs come with several benefits, including supporting graphic integrity, enforcing security, and allowing for integration of different types of content such as images and texts.

To ensure you make the most of PDFs, several Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) have been created. With such APIs, you can incorporate PDF capabilities into your application with ease.

Therefore, to help you in getting the right API for your use case, we evaluated several PDF APIs available on the Rakuten RapidAPI platform, which is the largest API marketplace in the world, based on the following criteria:

API features: We reviewed the key features of each of the PDF APIs.

Price: We assessed the cost of integrating each of the APIs into applications.

Ease of use: We scrutinized the ease of fetching the APIs’ features and adding them into applications.

Eventually, we developed the following list of the top 10 best PDF APIs:

The PDF To Text API allows you to quickly and effortlessly perform PDF to text conversions.

API features: With the PDF To Text API, you can easily extract the plain text from PDF documents at scale. It uses the latest PDF processing technology to deliver quality results to client-side JavaScript applications. The API returns the extracted text in JSON format.

Price: If you make less than 250 requests per month, you can use the API for free. Beyond the free plan, you can subscribe to any of its paid plans, which starts from $2 per month to $99 per month.

Ease of use: There is extensive documentation to ensure you get started integrating the API within a few minutes.

The Webpage API is a simple API that lets you to convert a webpage into a PDF or take its screenshot.

API features: With the Webpage API, you can provide the URL of a webpage and convert it to a PDF. Furthermore, you can use the API to take a webpage screenshot and get the results in PNG or JPG format.

Price: As long as you make less than 100 requests per month, you can use the API for free. Otherwise, you can pay either $6 per month or $40 per month and access higher limits.

Ease of use: There are usage samples in various popular programming languages, SDKs, and other helpful resources to facilitate fast and trouble-free integration.

The Create PDF Files API provides a simple way of converting JSON or CSV files into PDF documents.

API features: With the Create PDF Files API, you can easily create PDF documents from JSON or CSV files, or from JSON or CSV strings. This way, you can comfortably create invoices or PDFs with tables.

Price: If you make less than 100 requests per month, you can use the API for free. If you want to process more files, you can go for any of its paid plans, which ranges from $4.99 per month to $99.99 per month.

Ease of use: You can get up and running with the API easily—there are integration examples and other helpful resources to assist you in overcoming any programming challenges.

The Aspose.PDF Cloud API offers a reliable way of manipulating PDF documents in the cloud.

API features: With the Aspose.PDF Cloud API, you can create, edit, and convert PDF files in the cloud. It supports a wide range of file formats, including HTML, DOC, DOCX, TXT, XML, PCL, SVG, XPS, JPEG, and TIFF. The API allows you to create PDF documents from different formats and convert PDF documents to different formats. Furthermore, you can use the API to get word count of PDF pages, add watermarks, extract images from a PDF file, manipulate annotations, and more.

Price: The free plan comes with 50 credits per month. If you have more needs, you can pay $99 per month and get 1,000 credits per month.

Ease of use: There is exhaustive documentation to ensure you get up and running with the API as quickly as possible.

The Document Conversion Suite API allows you to create PDF and multipage TIFF documents with ease.

API features: The Document Conversion Suite API provides a cloud-based server for converting documents from different formats into PDF or TIFF formats. You can also use the API to convert a PDF file to a Microsoft Word format. The API supports a wide range of file formats, including email, excel, image, open office, power point, web page, word, XML, and more. For each request, you can convert a document of up to 25 MB. Furthermore, each converted document is discarded from cloud storage after 24 hours.

Price: The free plan is limited to 10 document conversions and 50 calls per month. Beyond the free plan, you can subscribe to any of its paid plans, which starts from $9 per month to $299 per month.

Ease of use: There are endpoints descriptions, code snippets in the popular programming languages, and other helpful resources to assist you to make the most of the API.

The Converter – Docx to PDF API is a simple API that allows you to convert .docx files to .pdf files flawlessly.

API features: With the Converter – Docx to PDF API, you can easily convert .docx files to .pdf files, just as its name suggests. You just need to specify the location of the file content and the conversion process will be completed for you automatically.

Price: If you make less than 10 requests per day, you can use the API for free. Otherwise, you can pay $25 per month and make 100 requests per day or $50 per month and make unlimited requests.

Ease of use: There is easy to follow documentation to ensure you get started using the API without any obstacles.

API features: With the Document Structure Analysis API, you can identify the main structural sections of PDF documents and extract their headings, titles, abstract, and more. It produces an outline that looks like a “table of contents” of the PDF document, allowing you to get an overview its layout. Since the API mainly generates the document’s markup, it can be applied to any language. Furthermore, you can use the API to extract the structure of Microsoft Word documents, emails, and other formatted documents.

Price: If you make less than 20,000 requests per month, you can use the API for free. Beyond the free tier, you’ll pay $0.01 for each additional request.

Ease of use: There is comprehensive documentation to ensure you overcome any integration challenges.

The Api2Pdf API is a simple REST API that lets you generate PDF documents accurately and without any file size restrictions. It’s powered by AWS Lambda, which enhances its reliability.

API features: With the Api2Pdf API, you can generate PDFs from office documents (PowerPoint, Excel, and Word), images (PNG, JPG, and GIF), URLs, and HTMLs. You can also use it to merge multiple PDFs into a single PDF. Furthermore, it supports LibreOffice, Headless Chrome, wkhtmltopdf, and other popular libraries.

Price: The free plan is limited to 50 requests per month. If you want to make more requests, you can opt for any of its paid plans, which ranges from $2 per month to $101 per month.

Ease of use: There is detailed reference documentation that provides you with all the crucial information you require to get going straightaway.

The Extractor.i-info.ws API enables you to retrieve the content of PDF files easily.

API features: With the Extractor.i-info.ws API, you can extract the content of PDF documents and use the gathered information for various purposes. The API also supports other file types, such as HTML, DOC, and DOCX. To carry out the extraction, you just need to select the file or specify its URL.

Price: As long as you make less than 1,000 requests per month, you can use the API for free. To get higher request limits, you can subscribe to any of its paid plans, which starts from $9 per month to $449 per month.

Ease of use: There is well explained documentation to facilitate smooth and painless implementation.

Conclusion

That’s Rakuten RapidAPI’s list of The Top 10 Best PDF APIs. We hope you’ll find the right API to incorporate PDF capabilities into your website or application.

Rakuten RapidAPI is the world’s largest API marketplace with 8,000+ third-party APIs and used by over 500,000 active developers. We enable developers to build transformative apps through the power of APIs. Find, test and connect to all the APIs you need in one place!